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Achamao Onuche Joseph
About 994 Nigerians have been deported from the shores of Ghana. Between 2016 and 2019 over 118 Nigerians have been killed in South Africa. A lot of international embassies in Nigeria are exploiting millions of Nigerians with mass visa denial and exorbitant non-refundable visa fees; a smart way off exploiting prospecting migrants who consider America as a promise land. Europe and her States either in units or disarray continually present, cajole, choke, romance and conditionally force African nations into signing deals, trade treaties and pacts that simplify their access to African markets (precisely Nigeria). They seek single currency, single Border laws, single standards on commodities and scientific patents; either to promote the easy inflow of already processed goods, or export of raw materials, seeds or access to valuable mineral resources.
Yet what does the African and Nigerian masses get in return? Nothing!, except, for the few complacent corrupt and lazy civil servants and political officers who do the work of flinging the gates of our market open to western exploitation (far away from any worry or attempt to achieve a balanced mutual benefit); sponsoring bills, policies, closed contracts and regulations that sabotage the future of our children and grand children; generations unborn; selling our blood, our identity, and all that makes us an entity for nothing.
How many of our processed goods have access to western markets? How come Nigerians even those in NNPC, have no factual and verifiable data on oil operations from our oil well up to the export pumps? Why are we allowing unchecked Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) designed to imitate, suppress and final eliminate our indigenous seeds and plants (especially for our commercial staple crops) – without purposefully seeing the implication on our food sovereignty and the future of our children? Our government; the legislatures, judiciary and executive in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) overseeing science and technology, food and drugs administration, even the consumer protection agencies) are either ignorant on these issues, too lazy to do a simple google search on the topic for other country experience, or are generally sabotaged to allow and promote unchecked GM into Nigeria – or all of the above.
Even when some Western countries in Europe (Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungry, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania and Switzerland) have all put a ban on “GMO for Food” to protect the safety of THEIR OWN citizens, our elected legislatures in the Senate and House of Representatives and the Executives in the Nigeria Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA), continue to forcefully push Nigerian citizens towards the consumption of GM Food and products. Today Nigerians do not know which food is GM or Not. The senators and legislatures, as well as the protection agencies (NAFDAC, CPC, NBMA, etc) are not pushing for GMO labelling in Nigeria nor a ban of GMO for Food like their more informed European counterparts. They are not pushing for stiff sanctions, strict liability and redress.
The Gods are not dead. Nigerians are on their knees, watching and will continue to pray fervently against all enemies of the Nigerian people, especially our brothers and sister in government (legislatures, executive, and judiciary) who are consciously separating, and selling our lives; our livelihood, our health, our safety; our wealth and the future of our children to exploitative capitalist.
Who knows who have been paid to compromise the safety of the Nigerian people? Where are the toxicology studies that are suppose to prove that the GMO foods approved by the agency in Nigeria are safe and who is paying for those studies – the promoters of GM? Where are the laws to ensure that Nigerians have a right to know and choose what they eat – organic or GM? Where are the sanction laws? … “For a cow that has no tail, God drives the flies away.” God is not dead!
Even when other counties like India and Burkina-Faso have gotten their cotton market taken away by the same capitalist countries and their international corporations, who come into their borders under the guise of providing technical and humanitarian support, export and prototype indigenous local seed and plant varieties- to birth improve engineered GM variety. Before which indigenous local seeds and plant varieties previously used by farmers are destroyed by applied chemicals; herbicides and inorganic fertilizers sold by the same companies; compromising and conditioning the soil in a way that only GM seeds flourish. These GM seeds cannot be stored for replanting, thus the farmer – the entire country will depend on the companies to purchase these seeds and supporting chemicals forever. To secure the exploitation, these capitalist countries and their corporations support the drafting and shaping of local laws, and policies in their target countries, they shape patent laws which give them the rights to ownership of new engineered specie i.e. GM (sourced from the indigenous local specie nearing extinction). At the end, they own the land, they control the seed, and we continue to be the begging dependant. Still Africa continues to be silly to allow the GM crops, seeds and plant variety?
For every time “Stanley Meets Mutesa” as described by David Ribadu, from the pre-colonial days till recently, the story ends with Africa opening up her doors to episodes of exploitation. The first is mental exploitation; making us believe we have a problem and they have the solution with good intention to solving them; next comes the resource exploitation; taking away raw materials (with pennies i.e. our crude oil, ingenious seeds, cash crops and plants), process abroad and importing back to us (in fortune we pay i.e. the processed fuel and GMO seeds and her associated herbicides and fertilizers). They taking away our local indigenous seed and plant varieties especially the highly demanded staple foods (cassava, maize, soya beans, etc); telling us our problem is food shortage and posing as a messiah to offer subsidized herbicides and fertilizers (with long episodes of safety instructions that both the educated and uneducated farmers cannot understand) the resulting application is the destruction of our agricultural land – a gain for the messiah to sell another solution, to keep him on top.
We must choose how we defined ourselves and our problem (i.e. food wastage and not food shortage). We must seek our own solution and new learning; We must start to ask ourselves real questions and seek our own solution first from our history and question the intentions of supposed helping nations.
How safe will the future of our children be in the next 50 years; when they have to import and buy food, whose genes have been modified in the laboratory? How safe will our children be in the next 50 years when the farm lands are too infertile to grow food without chemical fertilizers? Will our blood line still exist if the GM foods we eat today are found to be unsafe in the next 50 years making our grand children possibly sterile; simply because we fail to have publicly verifiable GM safety test; give Nigerian the right to choose their food or totally ban GM for food?
For a lot of International Corporation it’s all about making abnormal profit, market expansion and repatriating monies back to their home country. For their home counties, it’s all about conquering unadvanced and armless resource rich nations and accesses in unchecked manner resource to fuel themselves. We must make no mistake to think any person, nation or her corporations, will consider African lives or the lives of our children more sacred than the profit they stand to gain today.
Achamao writes from the University of Abuja.
